Obama bans new oil drilling in Atlantic, Arctic waters

US President Barack Obama has banned new oil and gas drilling in federal waters in the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, in a push to leave his stamp on the environment before Republican Donald Trump takes office next month.

Canada also placed a moratorium on new oil and gas leasing in its Arctic waters, subject to periodic review.

Obama used a 1950s-era law called the Outer Continental Shelf Act that allows presidents to limit areas from mineral leasing and drilling, Reuters reports.

Environmental groups said Trump’s incoming administration would have to go court if it sought to reverse the move.

The ban affects 115 million acres (46.5 million hectares) of federal waters off Alaska in the Chukchi Sea and most of the Beaufort Sea and 3.8 million acres (1.5 million hectares) in the Atlantic from New England to Chesapeake Bay.

Trump, who succeeds Obama on Jan. 20, has said he would expand offshore oil and gas drilling.

A recent memo from his energy transition team said his policy could increase production in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, as well as the mid- and south Atlantic.

Even if Trump tries to fight the move, few energy companies have expressed a desire to drill anytime soon off the coasts thanks to abundant cheap shale oil in North Dakota and Texas.

The White House and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau jointly announced their move to launch “actions ensuring a strong, sustainable and viable Arctic economy and ecosystem”.

Obama said in a statement that the joint actions “reflect the scientific assessment that, even with the high safety standards that both our countries have put in place, the risks of an oil spill in this region are significant and our ability to clean up from a spill in the region’s harsh conditions is limited”.

Canada will designate all Arctic Canadian waters as indefinitely off limits to future offshore Arctic oil and gas licensing, to be reviewed every five years through a climate and marine science-based life-cycle assessment.

Exploratory drilling in the Arctic is expensive and risky. Shell Oil ended its quest to explore in harsh Arctic waters in 2015, after a vessel it was using suffered a gash and environmentalists uncovered a law that limited its drilling.

The American Petroleum Institute oil industry group disagreed about the permanence of the ban and said Trump could likely use a presidential memorandum to lift it.

“We are hopeful the incoming administration will reverse this decision as the nation continues to need a robust strategy for developing offshore and onshore energy,” said Erik Milito, API’s upstream director.

The law under which Obama is acting enables a president to withdraw certain areas from leasing or drilling “for any public purpose”, such as to limit the impacts of climate change, according to a legal briefing by the Natural Resources Defense Council and Earth Justice.

Under that law, a president is not authorized to “undo” a previous withdrawal, making it more difficult for Trump to target without a lawsuit.

“No president has ever tried to undo a permanent withdrawal of an ocean area from leasing eligibility,” said Niel Lawrence, Alaska director and attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The provision has been used by six presidents from both parties over the past 65 years, including to withdraw as much as several hundred million acres at a time, he said.

In 2015, just 0.1 percent of US federal offshore crude production came from the Arctic. At current oil prices, significant production in the Arctic will not occur, according to a Department of Interior analysis.

There is currently no crude oil production in the Canadian Arctic. A number of companies including Chevron Corp., ConocoPhillips and Imperial Oil hold exploration licenses, but all three have put their drilling plans on hold, partly because of weak global oil prices.

On the US Atlantic coast, local groups have opposed offshore drilling and would fight the Trump administration’s attempts to open it up.

Apple Inc. has teamed up with Chinese payments giant Ant Financial Services Group and several local banks to offer interest-free financing amid waning smartphone sales, Reuters reports. The US tech behemoth issued a rare...

Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) chief executive Norman Chan Tak-Lam will retire from his post on Oct. 1, a day after his second five-year term expires, Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po announced on Thursday....

US President Donald Trump called on the country’s telecommunications companies to boost their work to build faster 5G wireless communications networks, saying they were lagging and at risk of being left behind by other countries’...

The People’s Bank of China (PBoC) is not yet ready to cut benchmark interest rates to spur the slowing economy, despite cooling inflation and a stronger yuan, which have fanned market expectations of such...

Property developer New World Development (NWD) on Wednesday announced the creation of Hong Kong’s first property-purchase blockchain platform, in collaboration with Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute Company (ASTRI). Bank of China...

Chinese smartphone makers have been making lots of improvement in the design and application of their products over the past few years. While many believe that Samsung Electronics and Apple are still the frontrunners...